That is the question many residents want answering, and they look to the Environment Agency to satisfy their concerns and to protect their health. Thames Waste Management (TWM) paid the Government agency around £20,000 to consider issuing it with a permit to burn household waste in North Guildford. Thames plans to build a 225,000 tonnes-a-year rubbish incinerator at the end of Moorfield Road on the Slyfield Green industrial estate, and after considering the potential health effects and the impact of pollutants, the agency decided to issue a licence in April.

Although TWM now has an IPC licence (Independent Pollution Control) it cannot operate the plant without the new IPPC licence (Independent Pollution Prevention and Control). Colin Chiverton from the Environment Agency worked on the Slyfield application and he has personally read some 11,000 letters opposing the plan. "We have to enforce standards," he said.

"Could the incinerator meet all of the standards that the UK and Europe have set? "We have consulted widely with health experts and the judgement is that it does meet all of those standards." The Guildford Anti-Incinerator Network (Gain) reacted with fury at the decision to grant a pollution control licence and claims that emissions, including carcinogenic dioxins, represent a serious risk to the health of local people.

Gain has pointed out that post 1996 incinerators have reported 899 breaches of the emission limits set by the EA during the past five years. Gain's chairman, Colin Matthews, said: "As it stands, the people of Surrey can have absolutely no confidence in the EA. Not only has it granted an outdated IPC licence for the Guildford incinerator, which it should not have done, but on 899 occasions the agency has failed to control emissions from the modern incinerators it has tried to reassure us about." However, Mr Chiverton said: "We will set limits that are a very, very long way from a safe limit.

"Every time a breach occurs we have to make a judgement on what course of action to take." Sometimes that would be ordering the plant to shut down until emissions returned to acceptable limits. The agency has calculated the average lifetime risk of fatality from this proposal to be one in 14,300, compared to one in 154 for accidents in the home and one in 143,000 for lightning deaths.

This is deemed to be an acceptable risk, although opponents of the plan point out the risks are taken involuntarily. Mr Chiverton pointed out that the decision to grant a licence could not be reversed and now it was down to the planning team at Surrey County Council to make a recommendation for the planning committee, he said.

When TWM applies for an IPPC licence the agency will treat it as a separate application and another public consultation will take place. The environmental pressure group, Green-peace, has published a report this week, reviewing all the scientific data on incinerators produced to date. The report maintained that incinerators release a cocktail of chemicals, including dioxins, lead, cadmium, mercury and fine particles that are all hazardous to human health. One study conducted on 70 municipal waste incinerators in this country found a twofold increase in the cancer deaths of children living nearby.

Greenpeace toxic campaigner, Mark Strutt, said: "This review makes it clear that by any reasonable assessment of the available evidence, it is reckless and harmful to continue the incineration of domestic rubbish."

The head of planning at Surrey County Council, Roger Hargreaves, said the Guildford planning application would be considered at the same time as plans to build waste burners at Capel and Redhill. This would be in September at the earliest and following the committee's decision a public inquiry would be "extremely likely", he said.